The founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrets site, has been hunkered down in Ecuador's London embassy for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations. He has maintained that the rape claims are a pretext to smoke him out so that U.S. authorities can snatch him.

It turns out the 45-year-old Australian may indeed have reason to worry about the U.S. Justice Department's intentions. "Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward,"
CNN reported Friday
.

WikiLeaks rose to prominence during the Barack Obama administration for publishing U.S. classified information stolen separately by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The U.S. reportedly believes it has actionable evidence that Assange directed and encouraged Snowden and Manning's illegal acts.

Many of WikiLeaks' critics believe Assange is seeking to damage the U.S.' standing in the world. During the American presidential election last year, WikiLeaks published hacked emails from both the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the campaign chairman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian government agents are responsible for those hacks and for coordinating their release with WikiLeaks to sow chaos in the U.S. political system, cause maximum damage to the Clinton campaign and aid then-Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Trump's Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, said this week that stopping the leaking of classified information and bringing Assange to justice is "a priority." "We've already begun to step up our efforts, and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,"
he said Thursday
.

WikiLeaks has already put out calls for donations to a defense fund for Assange.